


Once Upon a Time in Raven’s Roost -or- A Fistful of Morning Glories

by lalalalalawhy



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Depiction of birth, F/M, Julia is the player character we all need, Julia still dies but this is mostly about her life, Kravitz is Julia's astral godfather, Some depictions of violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-20
Updated: 2017-03-20
Packaged: 2018-10-08 11:07:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,881
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10385316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lalalalalawhy/pseuds/lalalalalawhy
Summary: There are a million ways to die in Raven's Roost. More, if you try to stand up to the Mad Governor. But Julia has always lived for what she believes in.FEATURING:The many bridges and corridors of Raven's Roost, a Grim Reaper who is not cut out for this, a handsome stranger with excellent sideburns, and a Mad Governor hellbent on revenge.





	

Julia was born into the world the same way she left it: small, covered in blood, and screaming.

This is how it happened.

* * *

“This is not my job! This is the exact opposite of my job!” screamed the grim reaper as the human laying before him screamed through a contraction. The woman, solidly built even without her very pregnant belly, was his bounty. The child she was about to birth was not.

It was Kravitz’s first day on the job and it was not, shall we say, going well.

He'd read about the blood and guts and viscera in the training manual, and he'd prepared himself, he thought, for all eventualities present at the end of life.

He was not ready for this blood or this viscera. He'd never even considered the beginnings of life. Not his department.

The woman screamed in pain, then glared at him, panting, and Kravitz tried to pull himself together.

“Right,” he said, dropping the accent he was trying out. “I won't take you before you're ready. We’re going to get through this. Somehow…”

He trailed off, wondering if there was someone he could call, in this plane or the next, someone who might have experience with this, any at all. He remembered that you were probably supposed to boil water, but here, in an open field, there was no time for that.

The woman gasped again, and grabbed his hand.

“Oh! Ow! Right, you're screaming again, yes, that's right, push!”

He remembered that pushing was somehow involved. He hoped she knew what he meant by it. He certainly didn't. 

Kravitz screamed along with the woman as she ground the bones of his hand together. He grew his flesh back for protection, only to have it immediately bruised in her grip.

The woman groaned and leaned back, glaring at him. He shrugged one shoulder apologetically. It wasn’t his fault her only midwife was an inexperienced angel of death.

He looked down and saw that she was bleeding profusely from a wound on the outside of her thigh. That's right, she was dying. He hurried to staunch the flow of blood as best he could with a strip of cloth he tore from the bottom of his robe. He had to hold off the inevitable long enough to only deliver one soul to the afterlife. 

He stopped working only when the woman gripped his arm, hard.

“She's here,” she said, and began her final effort, screaming and straining with all the strength she could muster.

“Okay, yes, good, here we go,” Kravitz said, and reached between her legs. As gently as he could, he eased the perfect baby girl into the world.

Her first wail was the most beautiful thing he’d ever heard.

He placed her on the woman’s chest. In contrast to the baby's healthy wails, the woman's breathing was shallow, her eyes unfocused. She tried to reach up to caress her child, but she didn't have the strength.

“Julia,” she breathed, and her eyes rolled back in her head. She took a few more rattling breaths, and then was no more.

Well, she was no more on the physical plane. Floating up next to him, her spirit  made sure to give Kravitz a piece of her mind.

“I'm fucking dead?!” Her spectral voice had lost all of its dying weakness and Kravitz jumped, in spite of himself. “That rat bastard Calen will pay for this, you mark my words! But look at her, isn't she beautiful?”

Kravitz had to agree, but he didn’t say so.

“Oh my goodness,” she said, tears springing to her eyes. “My beautiful baby girl. Who will tale care you?”

Kravitz silently gathered the baby into his arms, rubbing her clean with his robes. The ghost of her mother reached over and stroked her head. The baby blinked heavily and drifted off to sleep.

* * *

Steven Waxman locked up his workshop for the day. It had been a good day. He’d made a chair.

From out of the darkness, a hooded figure approached.

Steven’s breath caught in his chest. He glanced around for a weapon, or something he could use as a weapon, but all of his tools were safely in their place on the other side of the locked door.

The robed figure drew ever nearer, and Steven flattened himself against the door, breathing hard.

“Please, sir, I have nothing-”

He was cut off as the robed figure shoved a baby into his chest.

“Her name is Julia,” the figure said. “Her mother is dead.”

Steven instinctively cradled the babe. He had no children of his own, but his sister had seven with one more on the way. She opened her eyes and gazed at him, almost steadily. She was too young to focus, but he'd be darned if she wasn't trying.

The world melted away as he looked into her eyes. She held his gaze, almost steadily. His heart broke for her. To lose a mother so young was a tragedy, but he could tell she was a fighter: she was a good weight, and he could see the strength of generations in her eyes.

It was love at first sight.

“Will you care for her?” the hooded figure asked.

“Oh!” Steven said, startled out of his reverie. “Yes. Yes, of course.”

He never even considered saying no.

The figure nodded, gravely. Without saying anything more, they turned and walked away. A translucent patch of light Steven had assumed was part of the robe lingered behind. It reached out and touched Julia, just once more.

Steven could swear he heard a voice, just on the edge of hearing, say, “I love you.”

Ten feet away, the robed figure turned back and beckoned with a hand that had the thinnest fingers Steven had ever seen. The translucent shape hurried to meet it, and Steven watched as the robed figure reached out and tore a hole in the air, leading the translucent light through.

Steven thought he could hear voices on the wind as the hole knitted itself back together.

“Will she be okay?” a woman’s voice asked.

“That is not for us to know,” another voice said. It sounded like the robed person, speaking from a mile away.

“I'll do my best!” Steven shouted at the sky.

The baby woke up and began to cry.

“I'll do my best, Julia,” he said, cradling her close, his tears mixing with hers.

* * *

This is what people say about the fall of Raven’s Roost: that Mad Governor Calen, unable to stand the thought of an independent Raven’s Roost, had his troops bomb the support column of Craftsmen’s Corridor, killing and injuring scores of people. The townspeople who survived the bombing evacuated soon after, choosing to scatter to Fountain Hills, Greenstone, and Blue Ridge rather than live in fear of another attack.

The only ones who tell this story are people who were not present for the fall of Raven’s Roost. The ones who were will tell you this: that’s not how it happened. Not exactly.

Then again, almost all of the people who were there that day are dead now, so that’s all right.

* * *

Here is Julia age 10, running as fast as she can down the bridge between the Merchant’s Pillars and Craftsmen’s Corridor of Raven’s Roost. She takes the left turn just past her father’s shop across the suspension bridge, clickety clack, over to the district of engravers and monks. Straight ahead, past the scribes shop she runs, across another bridge. This one is more primitive its wooden slats old and treacherous, but she has been across it many times, and so she races down without hesitation. The bridge has been there since the founding of Raven’s Roost, but she has no time for that now, she’s running around the civic center, past the governor’s mansion and through the meadow behind, in the shadow of a great cliff wall.

She finds the break in the cliff face and hops down it, galloping into the canyon below. She runs along the narrow path with nothing but a chain between her and a thousand foot drop. Her cousin Benny is scared of the drop, but not Julia, she likes to run and she likes the way her heart pounds.

Instead of running along the switchbacks, she jumps down the narrow ones, using the chain as a tether, and hops down the cliff in a flash. She is going to see her grandmother, who will hand her a lavender caramel when she bursts through the door, panting and full of boundless energy.

After that, she is going to see her cousins whom she can boss into playing Heroes and Villains with her. She is missing both of her front teeth and her left knee is scabbed over and her elbow is scratched up from yesterday, when she fell while playing king of the mountain. Her father had forbidden her from playing that game until she was all healed up, but he hadn’t said anything about Heroes and Villains.

Kravitz watched her run from a distance. He’d come early to collect today’s bounty, a shopkeeper who would choke on some mutton later that afternoon, mostly because he liked being on time. Certainly it wasn’t to check up on the child, hoping to get a glimpse of her. No, that would unprofessional, and Kravitz was always professional.

Kravitz looked on as her pigtails bounced into the distance, and smiled to himself.

* * *

A decade later, Julia, age 20, was standing in Town Square in the Civic Center, yelling to any who would listen.

A small crowd gathered around as she named the injustices brought forth upon the people of Raven’s Roost by the corrupt Governor Calen. More people came to watch as she shouted, probably intrigued by the sight of Julia, standing on a literal soapbox, tall and fat with skin the color of mahogany and an explosion of dark curls piled high on her head. Her voice was bright and loud, and only those who knew her could hear the slight tremor in it.

“Mad Governor Calen makes himself richer and richer on the backs of the citizens of Raven’s Roost!” she shouted. “He and his cronies eat our honey and buy jewels with our money, earned from breaking backs of his people -- us, we, the people of Raven’s Roost!”

She paused, just in case anyone wanted to cheer. It didn’t seem like they did, but they hadn’t started throwing things, and nobody had gone to tell the special police yet.

Julia noticed a figure at the edge of the crowd: a human man with huge sideburns and a complexion the color of cherry wood. He was listening intently, nodding from time to time.

“We send grain to the Governor’s Mansion, and he feeds himself and his friends. We send chairs to the Governor’s Mansion, and he seats nobody but himself and his cronies. We send men and women to the Governor’s Mansion in the name of service to Raven’s Roost, and they disembark for lands unknown, never to be seen again! Who among us hasn’t lost someone dear, someone who was called to duty and never returned?”

Some of the gathered folks were nodding along now, still apprehensive. But it was high time somebody took a stand, thought Julia, and if she was the one who had to do it, so be it.

“We are willing to pay our taxes!” Julia shouted, raising a fist into the air, “but in return we ask that the Governor holds up his end of the bargain. We are willing to fight for our home, but we insist that we know the threat we face! Instead, he does nothing but bully and hurt and disappear his people. Our people! We the people!” She was nearly screaming now.

“The time has come!” she yelled. “It is time for a drastic change! The time has come to pick up our hammer and our tongs and turn them to our use. We must begin a new era of equality and democracy for all the people of Raven’s Roost!”

The crowd began shouting, some affirmatively, some in terror, as Mad Governor Calen’s secret police stormed the square.

“RUN!” Julia shouted, and she did.

She sprinted up and down the byways and bridges of the city she knew so well, knowing that she would be the first to die if they caught her. She knew this city better than almost anyone.

She realized, swinging around the corner onto the bridge connecting Merchant’s Heights with Washerman’s Row, someone was keeping pace with her. She didn't dare look behind to see who.

She ran faster, lungs burning, across the bridge and down the pathway to a drawbridge near enough to her father’s house, but she could still hear him behind her. It was no use. She’d have to turn around and fight her pursuer.

She whirled and set herself in a fighting stance, screaming “STOP!” at the top of her lungs.

To her surprise, it worked. The man skidded to a halt about five feet from her, bending double with his hands on his knees. He panted for a few seconds before he peered up at her.

To her surprise, she recognized him. This was not one of Governor Calen’s secret police. He was the man with the sideburns from the town square. A tentative kind of relief flooded her body.

“Hi,” he said, glancing up at her, still bent over. “You run pretty fast.”

“I was being chased!” she yelled at him, dropping her fighting stance at last.

The man looked around for a moment, looking for pursuers, before realizing she meant him. He furrowed his brow and smiled apologetically.

“Oh, yeah, um,” he said. “Sorry.”

He thought for a moment, then added, “If it helps, I didn’t realize I was chasing you? I thought we were running away together.”

“Idiot,” she muttered, under her breath, but she couldn’t help but be a little bit charmed by the stranger.

“I’m Magnus,” the man said, standing up straight and puffing his chest up like a bird preparing to crow. “I’m new in town. It seems like this place might need a hero.”

Julia rolled her eyes so far back in her head they may as well have fallen out. She turned on her heel ready to head back to her father’s house and leave him behind. Typical idiot man -- he thought that just because he had formidable biceps and a cart-load of self-confidence he could somehow “fix” things that he knew nothing about.

“Yeah, okay,” he said to her retreating back, “that may have been a bit hasty.”

She spun back around to face him. “You think?!” she asked.

“I don’t know exactly what’s going on here with the political situation,” Magnus said, “but I’m serious about trying to help. Do you, I don’t know, need a bodyguard or something?”

Julia looked him up and down. He was more than six feet tall, standing ramrod straight with shoulders wide as an ox and an ass she could probably bounce a coin off. He cut an imposing figure, no doubt about that, and, as of about a half hour ago, she was likely a wanted criminal. It might be nice to have someone like that around when the guards showed up.

“My father could use an extra hand around the shop,” she said. “Could you contain your heroism to carpentry? Bodyguarding only if necessary.”

“Yes, absolutely,” Magnus said.

Julia nodded at him, turned on her heel once again, and started walking back to her father’s workshop. He scampered to catch up.

“Um, miss?” he asked, and Julia glanced in his direction. He was trotting alongside her, all puppy-dog eyes and eagerness. She suppressed another eye roll and raised her eyebrows.

“What’s your name?” he asked, and she started laughing. The boy was trusting, she’d give him that. And he clearly wasn’t lying about being new in town.

“I’m Julia,” she said, sticking out her hand. “Julia Waxman.”

He shook it, grinning openly.

* * *

Here is Julia, once again, age 22 now, dancing with her eyes closed, her arms wrapped around the wide shoulders of a handsome fellow. They are wearing wedding rings, shining and new.

The pub is mostly dark, lit only by a fire and some candles. A band is playing a slow love song, and Julia opens her eyes to whisper something in the man’s ear. They laugh together, but quietly, a joke just for themselves.

After the song is over, an older man stands to give a toast. He speaks about the hard times ahead, the fight they have chosen, and also the moments of love that they share together. He begins to choke up, speaking of family, and of love, and of the bond they all now share.

A hearty “Hear hear!” rises up from the crowd, and everyone drains their glasses, including Julia and her beau.

The band begins to play again, a faster tune, more joyous, and the crowd cheers in delight as the couple begins to dance much faster.

“This isn’t even the best pub in town.”

Kravitz’s reverie was broken and he glared at the man next to him -- technically his bounty -- as the man sipped his pint.

“We should have gone to the Crow’s Nest, that’s where my good friend, the Governor, goes to have his banquets,” the man said.

Kravitz tried hard not to hate his bounties, but this one was making it difficult. He was the kind of haughty that made Kravitz wish he could take a soul via a strong right hook.

Kravitz was opposed to all needless suffering during the course of his work, but in this case, he figured, it was Kravitz who was suffering. Needlessly.

“Shut up and drink your beer,” Kravitz said, declining to mention it was sure to be his last. “It’s a beautiful moment.”

“Beautiful moment?” the man asked, scoffing. “This entire to-do is against the latest regulations from the Governor. No more than four people may meet up at once, unless they are members of the Governor’s partisan forces. Any meeting is presumed to be rebellious until proven otherwise, and I am nearly certain I have seen at least four of these faces on wanted posters all over town.”

Kravitz gripped his scythe a little tighter and narrowed his eyes.

“Really, we ought to be making a citizen’s arrest and leaving it to the Governor to sort out who’s the most culpable,” he said.

“Right,” Kravitz said, downing the rest of his white wine in a single gulp. “Time to go.”

Kravitz ran his scythe right through the idiot, permanently separating his soul from his mortal form. It was about half an hour early, but this had to fall under some bounty hunter’s discretion clause.

“Hey!” said the man, as Kravitz slit a hole in reality and shooed his soul into the realm of the Raven Queen. “You just wait until my good friend, the Gov-”

Kravitz closed the hole before the man could finish his thought. It was just as well.

He considered leaving the corpse there, but then thought about how the discovery of the man’s corpse might ruin the party. He slung his bounty over one shoulder and approached the barman.

The barman looked incredulously at the corpse. “Need a hand?” he asked.

“Oh, no, he’s just had a little too much to drink. He’ll be just fine in the morning,” Kravitz said, lying through his teeth.

Kravitz handed a bag of coins to the barman.

“Next round’s on me,” he said. “Give them the good stuff.”

The barman nodded, unsure why he was suddenly so cold. Kravitz turned and stalked out of the bar, off to deposit the corpse at his home, where he could be discovered in the morning, clearly having died in his sleep.

* * *

There was a battle. Of course there was.

It was horrible, as all battles are. Raven’s Roost saw more bloodshed in that one day than in all its prior years combined, as Governor Calen’s forces cut through the crowds of the revolt.

At the center of the conflict were Magnus and Julia. Magnus led from the front, as was his style -- _all brawn and heart and very few brains, that one,_ Julia thought fondly, but did not say out loud -- while Julia led from behind. Julia planned the areas of attack and the points of retreat, made sure the wounded could be tended to, kept supply lines open and blockading the Governor’s Mansion.

For a week it was a siege, with little blood spilled, but when the time came to storm the Mansion, Magnus brought his axe to the front lines. Sometimes it takes a good man to do a necessary deed. 

He gave some rousing speech about what was right and what was just, about picking up the tools they used to do good work and using them to work that needed to be done. He told them to take all who surrendered peacefully, but to defend themselves as they needed to.

Julia didn’t hear the speech. She was busy cutting the cords that held the suspension bridge that connected the Civic Center to the nearest escape route.

When Governor Calen fled the mansion, eyes bugged wide with fear and anger, he was met with the sight of Julia and her machete, leaning casually against the pillar where the bridge was once anchored.

Julia oversaw the terms of surrender.

After the war, things began to take on a familiar rhythm. Magnus had really taken to carpentry, and he seemed perfectly content to build chairs with her father. Julia was busy overseeing the negotiations outlining an interim government, but when she wasn’t doing that she loved to watch the two of them work, so focused on their tasks.

Magnus was a folk hero, which secretly made Julia feel very warm inside. She always rolled her eyes at the people who showed up looking for his help, but Magnus was mostly able to help them, and she loved him for it.

He was always a little offended on her behalf when people gave him credit for the revolt, even though she insisted she didn't mind. Magnus told them, and her, and everyone, that she was the true hero.

They had let the Mad Governor live, but had banished him from town, never to return. His political cronies were everywhere in Raven’s Roost, though, and it took Julia years to untangle the mess he’d left behind.

There were always rumors of retaliation. Did you hear, they said, the Mad Governor is coming back to claim what was his, or, they said, he's coming to destroy what he can't have. Did you hear, they said, he's leading an army of mercenaries across the plains.

Julia kept a wary eye out, but she couldn’t quite believe the talk. Life in Raven’s Roost was so undeniably better without the Mad Governor, it was hard to think about it going back to the way it was. Besides, every evening Julia came home to see Magnus working on a chair, or a carving of an animal, and it never failed to make her smile.  

When he left one morning to go to Neverwinter, she kissed him goodbye and hugged him tight. She always missed him when he was gone, but she knew she would see him again soon.

* * *

Istus loved all the living beings of the earth just as she loved every stitch she knitted. Just as every stitch kept the cloth whole, so too was every life imbued with purpose. Everyone had a fate, and none was more important than any other.

People aren't stitches, though, and just because she loved them all as a whole didn't mean she couldn't have a favorite, every now and again.

“Oh, hello,” Kravitz said, walking up to the cliff’s edge where Istus sat. The cliff offered a view of Raven’s Roost second to none: all the bridges and pathways laid out in dioramic simplicity.  

“Hello, Kravitz. How fares your Queen?” Istus asked, not glancing up from her knitting.

“If you don't mind my saying-”

“I'm sure I do,” Istus broke in, but Kravitz continued, undeterred.

“-she misses you,” he said.

“Yes,” Istus said. “As I miss her.” They were quiet for a moment, watching the small figures across the ravine. “You're here for her?” she asked, gesturing toward Julia.

Julia was running, as she had so many times before, up and down the bridges and pathways of Raven’s Roost. She had finally gotten reliable intelligence that the Mad Governor was serious about retaliation, and was set to detonate something big that night.

Julia had found the first wire leading from the Merchant’s Pillar down to the Monastery below, from there branching into five different wires, each leading to a different part of the city. She ran, trying to find something, anything, that would allow her to disable the bomb.

“I am,” Kravitz said, a little mournfully.

“You're early,” she said. “It’s not yet been decided.”

Kravitz looked at the Goddess long and hard, and she gazed back in his eyes. He finally flinched first, and broke his gaze away.

“It didn't feel right to miss this,” he said. “Whatever happens.”

* * *

There is another other version of this story. It goes like this: Julia dismantles the bomb set by Calen, and by the time Magnus comes home, city forces have ended the threat from Calen for good. They settle in to a comfortable rhythm, counting the years as they pass, marking the celebrations and small tragedies that make up any life. Magnus stays home to raise their two children and build his chairs. On each child’s third birthday, he builds them a small rocking chair of their very own and bakes a cake that never has enough chocolate. Julia remains involved in politics of Raven's Roost, often going off to have adventures of her own, negotiating treaties and trade deals with neighboring communities. Eventually she becomes the first democratically-elected governor in Raven’s Roost, and works for many years to create better lives for all its citizens. She retires in good faith, passing the torch to the next governor in the first-ever peaceful transfer of power. Julia and Magnus have good times and bad, but far more of the good, and they watch their children grow up to have children of their own. Magnus and Julia grow older and fatter and happier together until they die of old age, hours apart, surrounded by their grandchildren.

Istus watched as that skein of yarn unwound itself, falling further and further down the steep canyon wall. She paused in her knitting, looking up from the thread to watch Julia across the canyon, frantically racing across the bridges and narrow pathways, bounding up and down the switchbacks, following the wires, trying to find the detonator before it was too late.

For a moment everything else was still, and the weightless moment hung in the air, tumbling end over end. Then, with a sound in the distance of clattering bones or rolling dice, Istus cocked her head to one side, pulled out her scissors, and cut the thread short.

* * *

The detonator was not found. The explosion was loud and long and left few survivors. Julia left this world the same way she entered it: small, covered in blood, and screaming.

* * *

“Hello,” Kravitz said, greeting Julia’s spirit as it floated up across the canyon to where he sat.

He was alone. Istus was long gone. She had blinked out of this plane of existence without Kravitz even noticing it.

“It's good to see you again,” he said.

Julia was confused. This man (skeleton?) seemed very familiar, but she couldn’t quite place him.

“What happened?” she asked, her hand still trembling with the ghost of leftover adrenaline, even though her body and all its chemicals lay broken below.

“That is not for us to know,” Kravitz said. “But there is someone here who is very excited to meet you.”

Kravitz cut a slit through the planar boundary. He reached out his bony hand to Julia, beckoning her forward.

Julia thought that was unfair; she liked knowing things. But she was in no position to argue. She slipped her hand into Kravitz’s and let herself be led forward to what lay beyond.

* * *

Sometimes, stories are over before they can begin. Sometimes, intentions of great success are met with great failure instead. Sometimes, the consequences of a single action can reach far beyond what anyone could have imagined.

This is how the world works.  It’s ugly and unfair but it is ours. We must do our best to look after it.

That wasn't what Magnus said when he gave his eulogy for Julia. Or rather, that's what he meant to say. Most of what he actually said was swallowed by sobs. But that was what he meant.

Julia knew it. She always knew what he meant, even when he couldn't say it. She sat, with Kravitz on one side and her mother on the other, and watched her own funeral from the rafters. After it was over, she walked into the Astral Plane, hand in hand with her mother, and waited for the rest of her family to come home.

**Author's Note:**

> Morning glories are a fast-growing flowering vine with attractive flowers and a tolerance for poor, dry soils. Most morning glory flowers unravel into full bloom in the early morning. The flowers usually start to fade a few hours before the "petals" start showing visible curling, eventually closing entirely until the next morning dawns.
> 
>  _The morning glory which blooms for an hour differs not at heart from the giant pine, which lives for a thousand years._  
>  \-- Alan Watts
> 
> * * *
> 
> Quick shout outs are in order for Mansion, whose cheerleading is the best, fangirl_squee for plant expertise, and [this post](http://writing-prompt-s.tumblr.com/post/156624647115/this-is-not-my-job-this-is-the-exact-opposite-of) from writing-prompt-s, which kicked off this story. Also, shout out to Lizzo for being both my headcanon of Julia and producing [Coconut Oil](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LPUllv_Uak), which I listened to non-stop while writing this.


End file.
